In Surprise to Few, Cohen Says Trump Often Used Racist Language

In a story that won “breaking news” headlines on cable news, former personal attorney for Donald Trump, Michael Cohen, told Vanity Fairthat Donald Trump repeatedly used racist language before he was elected.

According to Cohen, Trump engaged in a discussion about former Apprentice contestant Kwame Jackson, an investment banker who graduated from Harvard Business School, that there was no way he could “let this black fag win.” Jackson was on the first season of The Apprentice and came in second.

According to Cohen, Trump said, ‘That’s because black people are too stupid to vote for me,’ in response to a conversation about how a crowd he was about to speak to was almost all white.

Cohen also told the magazine that after Nelson Mandela’s death in December 2013, Trump asked Cohen to “Name one country run by a black person that’s not a shithole.”

That exchange was reminiscent of Trump’s January 11, remarks during a meeting at the White House in the Oval Office with U.S. Senators in which at least one participant relayed that Trump said, “Why do we want all these people from ‘shithole countries’ coming here?” The comment sent off a worldwide firestorm of controversy and revulsion.

As was the case in January, the White House had no initial reaction and no denial to what was reported regarding Cohen’s rendition of what the President said. It would appear that the White House press office has become use to having no reaction to claims that the President has said something racist.

An earlier controversy on August 10 involved a claim by former Apprentice contestant and White House staffer, Omarosa Manigault-Newman. She claimed in a book that Trump was caught on mic saying the n-word “multiple times” during the making of The Apprentice. She also claimed that what was said was recorded on tape.

In the 1973 the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a civil rights suit against the Trump organization, which was Donald Trump and his father Fred for “violating the Fair Housing Act of 1968,” by turning away minority applicants.

In 1989, Trump said, “maybe hate is what we need” during an interview as he referred to the Central Park Five. Trump took out a full-page ad in the New York Times, worth approximately $80,000, calling for the death penalty for the five teenagers in a case reminiscent of the 1931 Scottsboro Boys case.

The five Black and Hispanic men were falsely accused of raping Trisha Meili, a white female better known as the “Central Park Jogger.” The five were falsely accused, prosecuted and served jail time, only to be exonerated years later in Dcember 2014. The five men won a settlement of $41 million and sued the city of New York for an additional $52 million in damages. Trump has never acknowledged their innocence.

Trump’s father, Fred Trump was arrested in 1927 on Memorial Day in 1927 at a Ku Klux Klan march in Queens, NY, to protest Protestant American citizens being “assaulted by Roman Catholic police of New York City.” Fred Trump was arrested “on a charge of refusing to disperse from a parade when ordered to do so,” and the only one of seven men dismissed without charges.

Lauren Victoria Burke is an independent journalist and writer for NNPA as well as a political analyst and communications strategist. She appears regularly on Roland Martin Unfiltered and can be contacted at LBurke007@gmail.com and on twitter at @LVBurke